Farewell, strange summer. Hello, strange cats.

It is amazing to me how quickly summer turns to fall.  I swear I can sense a difference in solar wavelengths.  I don't need a calendar to know when it is September.  I hope we have a nice, long friendly fall, followed by a good, cold winter that kills a lot of flies and mosquitoes.

 Not TOO cold, though.  I am worried about the cats that have set up housekeeping on my front porch.  It all started during the heat wave from hell.  A golden Manx cat who was extremely undernourished and had obviously been a fight (he lost) was gasping on my porch.  I gave him a drink of water.  He was most appreciative.  I gave him a drink of water for about three days, and then started giving him food as well.  I call him Scruffy.

It was gratifying to watch him regain his health.  After a few weeks, I was plotting to habituate him and then take him to the vet for neutering when I got distracted by the grey tabby.  A petite female Scruffy showed up with one day, she is clearly from the same gene pool that produced my Hobbes.  I called her Baby and fed and watered her, too.

Then, about three weeks after that, I looked out the door and was shocked to see that she was nursing a little tailless grey kitten.  I changed her name to Mama and called the little fellow Baby.  After a few days, he was waiting for me at the door, and squeaking incessantly for his food, so I changed his name to Squeaks.  Scruffy, Mama, and Squeaks.  The perfect family.

Except, a week later, a second kitten joined the family at the dish.  Another male, grey, fluffy where Squeaks is short-haired, but altogether a handsome dude.  By now, the babies were weaned so my food became even more important.  (And it kept them from assaulting the birds.)

Now I was becoming concerned.  It seemed easy enough to fool and trap one cat- maybe even two-  but how in the world do you manage to ensnare four? I was willing to pay to have them neutered, but how was I to round them up?  And if I made a move against one or two, I might frighten off the rest and there could be a new batch of kittens to worry about come spring.  Four is a right big number of cats.

Except that they are five.  Yep, another kitten, twin to the fluffy male, tumbled out of the woods one day.  By   now I am seeing less and less of Scruffy and Mama, but they still stop by from time to time, and now there are three young cats dependent upon my largess.

And winter is coming.  I have made a shelter for them on the front porch which I will insulate more fully as the weather worsens.  Squeaks has let me pet him but he draws the line at being picked up.  I hope that will change and I can get him to the vet for shots, de-flea-ing and denaturing before spring.  His brothers still run at the sight of me even though I have been feeding them twice a day for almost four months now.  Kinda pisses me off, really.

So it is official.  I am the crazy cat lady.  I have 5 outdoor cats and four indoor cats.  (Well, only three of the indoor cats are mine.  Snoopy, the morbidly obese cat from Hell, is my Dad's.) As much as I adore cats, I just hope I can prevent the next generation of craziness.